Death of a Librarian
by John Stafford
Summary: Colin Dexter's Morse is called in to Caroline Graham's Badger's Drift to investigate a Midsomer Murder during Inspector Barnaby's absence at Heathrow Airport


Death of a librarian

A Morse Story by John Stafford

"It's an assegai, Sir"

"I know it's an assegai, Lewis," Morse looked away from the body, the bile rising in his gullet, "but how do you know? Been visiting the Ashmolean on your day off?"

"No, sir, it was on Blue Peter, about tribal spears and such."

"It's gone clear through his chest, through the mattress and into the floor."

"Who'd want to murder a hard-up librarian in his Badger's Drift bedsitter?"

"Any number of people. Someone who didn't think he chose enough Caroline Graham books. His secret actress lover who was about to be exposed in the papers. There are a couple of clues we might start with. This curtain ring looks interesting, and I think the newsagent might have some questions to answer about this scrap of newspaper. Get down there, Lewis and see what you can find out."

It didn't take long to find the Red Herring Stores, because it was one of the two shops in the village, the other being the Vital Villages People's Network Online Access Centre, where the librarian had worked. Big Roger Emery, the five-foot shopkeeper, looked warily at Lewis's warrant card.

"It's usually that Inspector Barnaby who investigates the murders in this village. Why's he not here?"

"Oh he's on special duties today, not his usual murder investigation in the village. Something about a voiceover at Heathrow Airport."

"Well I don't know anything about the murdered librarian except that he kept reading my papers and magazines instead of buying them, he tore bits out to use as bookmarks, and he got people using Friends Reunited on the Internet."

"Something wrong with Friends Reunited?"

"It's harmless enough until your wife meets up with the boy she sat next to in Geography, runs off to Benidorm with him and leaves you minding the village shop on your own."

"So you admit you had a motive?"

"I wanted to kill him yes. I even had a suitable weapon: I've got a whole collection of tribal spears I stole from Worcester City Museum at the last Three Choirs Festival. Look, up on the wall there. Strange, there's one gone missing since yesterday"

"I think you'd better come into Causton and have words with my Inspector."

"I'll leave you to mind the shop, then, Mrs Blood."

"It'll be alright with me. Only thing is, there's usually another murder in this village within a couple of hours of the last one, so best leave me the spears to look after myself. Or to kill someone with, if no-one else takes the trouble."

"Oh, one more thing, Mrs Blood. Do you know anything about this curtain ring?"

"Not a ring, that. It's an 'ook."

And every writer knows that a hook is the best way to end a chapter.

"This is the evidence, then, Lewis." Morse looked puzzled for once, while he nursed his pint of Morrell's. "A man is stabbed with some kind of spear."

"An assegai, sir."

"Yes, yes. But Max says that no ordinary human would have the strength to do that, right through the chest, mattress and floorboards. Big Roger and Mrs Blood are hardly supermen…"

"Superpersons, sir. You aren't allowed to discriminate…"

"Don't quote equal opportunities at me, sergeant. And the spear is not the one missing from the shop."

"No, the City Museum managed to steal that back in a …"

"That's it. That's it, Lewis. That's our answer! Once you have discounted the improbable, then what is left, however impossible, must be the truth!"

"So who did it, sir?"

"The Universal I. The author. Because he isn't in the story, he, or she, is the only one who isn't bound by its rules."

"But it can't be Mr. Dexter. He's playing the corpse. He always appears in his own stories, so he is bound by their rules. And Miss Graham has an alibi. She's at Worcester Museum, taking back the spears she borrowed for this story."

"What you are forgetting, Lewis, is that this one is by neither Colin Dexter nor Caroline Graham, but by John Stafford, masterthief of plots, characters and jokes. Admit it, Stafford, that you are the murderer."

And I have to confess that it was indeed me who stabbed the Badger's Drift Librarian clean through the chest, mattress and floorboards. I murdered him because he would not stop nagging me for the book about dog training that I hadn't brought back. I couldn't. My dog had eaten it! There's just one thing I don't understand. Why did they think that the curtain pole was an assegai? Whatever that is.

Copyright © 2003 John Stafford


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